Love Among the Greats - Softcover

Pearlman, Edith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0910055807 ISBN 13: 9780910055802

Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2002

Synopsis

Edith Pearlman's characters in this collection of stories are children, old women, young men, rabbis, toy makers, lovers, invalids, immigrants, schmoozers, angels, and fools; all perfectly real and accessible, all drawn with a kind of comic quietude.

The title story begins: "At the dinner following Michael's wedding to Bellamy they did the chair thing. It was a Jewish wedding, after all--as Jewish as a wedding could be when the bride's mother was not Jewish and therefore the bride, strictly speaking, was not Jewish either; as Jewish as a wedding could be in a prairie college town where the one synagogue, struggling to keep solvent, rented itself out weekdays to Alcoholics Anonymous and a quilting group."

Winner of the first annual Spokane Prize for Fiction, Love Among the Greats is a magnificent world tour of characters, tones, and fictional structures, all of them brought to life with a stunning restraint.

About this title

About the Author:

Edith Pearlman has published stories in the Massachusetts Review, Yankee Magazine, Antioch Review, and Kenyon Review, among many other journals. She lives near Boston, Massachusetts.

From Publishers Weekly:

Pearlman paints a poignant, evocative series of portraits in her second short story collection, bringing her wide-ranging curiosity and intelligence to bear on an assemblage of unusual characters. A toy executive is transferred to a Czech village in "Toyfolk," and befriends a couple of toy collectors whose relationship is not what it seems. Two older single women, an obituary writer and a seamstress, find their passing relationship transformed into a lasting friendship when they escape a fire together in "Fitting." Several interrelated stories chronicle the life of Michal, the only child of a Midwestern Jewish college professor and his lovely gentile wife. In the title story, Michal survives a brief failed marriage and finds love at last with black pediatrician Malachi in the stacks of the Harvard library. Pearlman's sophisticated, off-kilter take on matters of the heart also illuminates "Fidelity," the brief story of a love triangle commencing when the protagonists are in their 60s and ending 20 years later. Some of her stories are so underplayed that they fall flat, but Pearlman is a compassionate narrator who uses irony and subtle humor to expose the flaws and foibles of her characters. As was the case in Vaquita, her award-winning debut effort, she shows herself to be a writer of uncommon depth and wisdom, with a penchant for adding a folkish touch to her plots and lessons.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Carnegie Mellon University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• ISBN 10: 0910055807
• ISBN 13: 9780910055802
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 152